Snide Reply

Category: Family life

  • Would you go back, Jack, and do it again?

    If Lincoln hadn’t gone to the theater, he would have been run over by a carriage. Or he would have had a heart attack. Or he might have fallen down the White House staircase and broken his neck. Or something like that.

    My husband, a historian, hates speculative chat about history. What difference does it make what might have happened if Lincoln hadn’t gone to the theater? Lincoln went to the theater; he was assassinated. There are no do-overs. Write it in the book and move on.

    But, I want a do-over. Actually, I want more than one do-over; I want a lot of do-overs. As my daughter might say, even, I want a lot, a lot, a lot of do-overs.

    I’d use a bunch of them this morning. First, I’d do-over my dental situation. I’ve got dental dominoes going on in my mouth. My front crown fell out recently, bringing down with it a whole range of dental woes, from yellowing to molar rot.

    One of the indignities of aging that rarely gets mentioned is teeth. You hear about hot flashes, back pains, creaking joints, heart attacks, weight gain, gray hair, sagging chins, drooping butts. But no one ever told me that I’d be sitting at my computer, flossing while catching up on blog reading, and my tooth would fall out. Just fall out and plink right onto my laptop.

    Certain dental work can be delayed, like repairing molars. Heck, I figured, I’ve got more than one and it’s not like I’m eating caramels every day. Filling the 22 cavities in my 9-year-old daughter’s mouth seemed far more pressing a year ago. So, my molars waited. But a crown. . . now that can’t wait.

    A crown can be a lovely thing and mine served me well. Beneath the crown, though, is a stump that looks like something cooked up by a British Hillbilly dentist on crack. Money be damned, I could not—would not—go around looking like Austin Powers.

    Replacing the crown is going to be far more involved than I suspected. First, the surrounding teeth need to be bleached because I’ve spent years drinking coffee, tea, cola and all the other things that keep me awake for the glory that is my life. Apparently, they don’t make crowns in the yellowish ivory hue my teeth have taken on. So, bleach. Which leads to bleach trays. Which leads to this morning’s appointment.

    Preparing for the dentist required blow-drying my hair. My hair, which I affectionately refer to as “frog fur,” is fine. And flat. So, I bend over and dry it from the roots believing that this will magically make my hair fuller. I bent over, began drying and then screamed with pain as my back fell apart, perhaps in sympathy with my tooth. When the pain subsided, I stood up and decided that a half-head of volume was better than no volume at all.

    With my half-full head and broken back, I hobbled to the hall closet for my purse. No purse. Everywhere in the house? No purse. So much no purse that I decided my purse must have shrunken and was now so small that my dog ate it. Then I decided my children were no longer content to drive me crazy figuratively and had invented a new game: Gaslighting Mommy, which involves hiding things Mommy frequently needs, like glasses, car keys and her wallet. I called around. No purse at Whole Foods. No purse with husband at his office, as if he suddenly decided he needed a lavender and white man-bag. No purse in my son’s or daughter’s rooms, though I was too afraid to move anything for fear something frightening might be under them.

    So, I called the dentist to reschedule my appointment. Then I found the purse. In the garage. I know how it got there; I’m not telling.

    Then the dentist called. They were worried about me. I decided it was nicer to have someone worry about me than to point out that they wouldn’t have been worried if they were checking their messages. We rescheduled.

    Finally, all the drama seeped out of the morning and I got over wanting a do-over. I decided the newly discovered down time would be well spent at the library.

    I wakened the teenager. We drove to the library. On the way, I rear-ended a Jetta.

     

    Have you ever wanted a do-over? What would you use it on?

    PS. I attempted to download a photo of a lovely woman with terrible teeth to accompany this post. My computer crashed three times.

  • Is Gun Control a Hopeless Case?

    I thought about not posting today. Not just not writing. No guest post; no re-blog. No “I’m taking a vacation, see you next week.” Nothing. See, I spent the week wondering what I would write about the Aurora shooting. It seemed I really should write something about the Aurora shooting. It’s a tragedy and not recognizing it feels callous. Writing about funny things my kids say, weird places my dad thinks he’s been and other trivialities seemed disrespectful.

    I don’t believe I’m a callous person nor disrespectful, so then why have a struggled so much to find something coherent to say about what happened on July 20?

    Because I’m not surprised it happened. And I’m not surprised at the aftermath. Columbine. Virginia Tech. Northern Illinois. Strip malls. Fast food places. Someone goes crazy with guns. The media goes crazy reporting on it. Some people say we need gun control. Some other people say guns don’t kill people. It goes around and around and nothing changes except the people who die.

    I tried to find a place of righteous anger. Nothing relieves a sense of helplessness better than a good head of steam. I couldn’t find a thimble full of steam, let alone a head.

    I’ve been a gun-control advocate for a long, long time. When I read the Bill of Rights, I agree with the dissenters in Columbia v. Heller and don’t leave the “well-regulated militia” part out of the Second Amendment. I have no problem requiring guns to be registered. I register my kids for school every year, filling out the same stupid information on the same freaking forms even though none of it has changed from the year prior. Though I firmly believe my children are shortening my life, kids aren’t generally considered lethal weapons. Surely someone wishing to own a gun can endure the inconvenience of registering it.

    I have supported handgun bans, too, and certainly got in line to ban assault weapons. Someone wants to rape me or take my purse, they don’t need to shove a machine gun at me or hold a pistol to my head. They’d convince me with a knife. Hell, I’m so small, I could easily be overpowered by just about any determined criminal.

    As with all issues that interest me, I researched gun control before forming my opinions. So, when the same old “no guns, yes guns” points and counterpoints got trotted out over the bodies of the Aurora shooting victims, I revisited gun control issues.

    And now I feel helpless. We can ban gun sales. We can stop manufacturing guns. We can make it illegal to own guns. (Oh, shut up! Yes, you can keep your rifle for hunting and shooting the heads off home intruders. Tuck it under your bed with your slippers.) We can do all of these things and we will still have too many guns.

    We like to say things that will always be with us are like cockroaches. But cockroaches are biodegradable. Guns aren’t. Guns are like pennies. There are billions of pennies floating around the world and unless someone gathers them all up and melts them down, they will continue to float around. Same with guns.

    I’ve heard a joke about lawyers that goes something like this: if you took all the lawyers in the world and put them at the bottom of the ocean, what would you have? A good start. If we took all of the guns in America and put them at the bottom of the ocean, I think we’d have a good start, especially if we start with the assault weapons.

    But we will never get all of the guns to the bottom of the ocean. We will never even agree that a good number of guns should be at the bottom of the ocean. Until we have the economic, political and civic will to understand that guns and their proliferation are a problem for those who want to own them and those who don’t want anyone to own them, we will be awash in guns and the concomitant violence.

    What makes me feel even more hopeless in considering the Aurora shootings is that we need terrible tragedies to force us to consider the consequences of being the most heavily armed society in the world. And such tragedies have little to do with the true costs of having so many weapons so readily available. Someone as clearly unstable as James Holmes would definitely have found a way to make a murderous spectacle of himself whether he did it with guns or machetes.

    The highest cost to us of gun violence takes place all day, every day. Caring for a single gun shot survivor—from the time he hits the ER to the day he dies—can cost more than $600,000, not including lost wages and other indirect costs. Gun violence doesn’t just cost us in health care, but in costs for increased security, such as metal detectors; costs to prosecute, defend and incarcerate offenders; and in the emotional and psychic costs of raising children in a violent, unpredictable world.

    There is no way to make sense of a heavily armed man walking into a movie theater and shooting as many people as he can. We can spew our entrenched beliefs about guns and gun violence at each other all day, every day and it won’t begin to prevent another James Holmes. In fact, choosing to discuss gun violence only when it is demonstrated in its most spectacular form disrespects all victims, whether they were shot in a movie theater or an alley.

  • Screw Waldo! Where’s Dad?

    This week, I begin experimenting with my Monday post. I had been posting a link to my Naperville Patch column. In a sign of the times, the Patch is no longer carrying opinion pieces written by people with, you know, opinions. Said people like to be paid. Said news source figures they can get people to write blogs for free. I have, indeed, gone to the dark side and agreed to write a blog on the Patch covering the same topics I did in my column: parenting and suburban life. For now. But that doesn’t mean I have to send y’all to the Patch! Oh, no, no! You can read my excellent verbage here. Benefit to you? I leave in the snarky, nasty bits I can’t really put on a family media outlet. Enjoy!

    Maybe you’ve seen them. The Proctor and Gamble “Thank you, Mom” commercials showing moms around the world getting their little athletes out of bed, shuttling them to lessons, washing out their work out gear, biting their nails at meets—all so the tykes can grow into Olympic athletes? Another shows athletes arriving and competing at the Olympics and each athlete is portrayed by a child ‘cause “in their moms’ eyes,” the ad states, “they are all still kids.” The spots have gone viral on the Internet primarily because they’re real tearjerkers.

    They make me cry, too, but not only because of their sentimental portrayal of the sacrifices moms make for their kids. I’m saddened the whole campaign focuses on moms as if they are the sole reason athletes are able to rise to the pinnacle of their sports.

    Tell that to Apolo Ohno, raised by a single dad who juggled 12-hour shifts at his hair salon with caring for his infant son. Dad got Apolo into competitive swimming and inline skating to keep his son from becoming a latch-key kid. When Apolo switched to speed skating at 12 years old, his father drove him to competitions throughout the US and Canada then got him into the Lake Placid Olympic Training Center at 13. Apolo is the most decorated American Winter Olympic athlete in history.

    Gymnast Nastia Liukin and tennis player Serena Williams are coached by their fathers. Ireland’s Katie Taylor, also coached by her father, is following in his footsteps; she’s the world women’s boxing champion.

    Virtually assured of a slot on TeamUSA in 2016 is 13-year-old diver Jordan Windle, who nearly qualified for the 2012 team. Jordan, adopted from Cambodia at age two, will have two dads to thank should he achieve his dream.

    I have nothing against giving mom a pat on the back but the P&G spots make me queasy reinforcing, as they do, the idea that raising children is a woman’s job. My nausea is increased as I watch the P&G moms doing the laundry, washing dishes, shuttling kids in their big fat minivans. Yeah, someone has to drag the cranky, sleepy future Olympians out of bed but in our house it’s Mom during the week and Dad on weekends ‘cause, you know, we both work. Good luck finding a mom doing anything but home and kid care in these spots. And dad? The only one you’ll see is sitting on his butt watching his daughter on TV.

    Twenty-four percent of children in the United States are being raised by a single mother. Abundant research shows the presence of responsible, involved fathers reduces poverty, prevents child neglect and abuse, increases child health and academic performance and decreases discipline problems, among many other benefits. In that light, leaving dad out of the picture in an advertisement seems irresponsible at best and dangerous at worst. P&G claims it is the “proud sponsor of moms.” How hard would it have been to be proud sponsor of parents?

    The P&G commercials are fictional dramatizations of idealized moms. If you’re still looking for an Olympic moment that will bring tears to your eyes, look back to 1992 when British runner Derek Redmond tore a hamstring muscle in the 400 meters. In pain, he hobbled to the finish supported by a man who ran onto the track from the stands—his father.

  • And a Happy Monday to you, too!

    Sell childhood home? Check! Mother of all meltdowns from daughter?Check! Smash thumb in door? Check! Lose column-writing gig? Check!

    Today, I found out my column is being cut from the Naperville Patch. So, this might be the last.

    http://naperville.patch.com/articles/handling-the-heat-when-it-s-too-hot-to-handle

    Any ideas on what I should publish on Mondays from now on? Parenting tips? Rants? Recipes? Funny things my son says, which would have to be heavily redacted?

    Janice

  • Incense, (Peppermints) and Guns

    Photo: Robby Mueller

    You would have thought I was negotiating to form my own drug cartel, what with the references to automatic weapons, marijuana and LSD. Throw in the odd request to stop at Burger King to appease a serious case of munchies and it’s no wonder I was feeling a little like I’d been dropped into an Al Pacino movie.

    The conversation up front was all about allowing incense burning in our house. I graduated from high school in 1976. As I told my son, “I know about incense! First it’s incense and then it’s marijuana and pretty soon you’re a has-been rock star chatting about your dysfunctional family with Dr. Drew.” Ok, maybe I didn’t really say that, but only because I was interrupted by my daughter, who wants a gun.

    I was prepared for the conversation with my son. I’ve lived through decades of don’t-do-drugs messages. It started with my mom saying, “Don’t do drugs,” rolled through “this is your fried egg on drugs,” then it was “Just say ‘no’ ” and I’m now firmly established in “Parents: the anti-drug” territory. As an anti-drug, I am supposed to be a powerful force in preventing my son’s appearance on Celebrity Rehab.

    I am finding, though, that the anti-drug, like all things good for you, is best taken in small doses. So, the drug talk is a hit and run operation. I wait for an opening, drop in a “don’t do drugs because blah, blah, blah” and move off the topic. I have a short list of reasons for not doing drugs and I rotate them. One day I might use, “Drugs are illegal and you’d be eaten alive in jail.” Another day it might be, “Drugs impair your judgment. Just look at what the hippies wore!” Frequently, it’s “If you die stupid, I won’t go to your funeral and I’ll cry forever.” This one is particularly useful when a celebrity dies stupid.*

    The incense issue came to the fore over a video game tournament my son has planned. My son isn’t big on organizing events, so when he decided an all day Zelda marathon was the way to while away the summer, I was onboard. Bewildered, but on board. Each of his friends was assigned an iteration of The Legend of Zelda that he would play through while the others watched. One friend wants to burn incense to “help him concentrate.” I try not to judge, but as the anti-drug, I am highly attuned to disturbances in my son’s force field. This friend is also enamored of the Beatles’ Maharishi Whatshisname period and wants a sitar.

    So, it was easy to just say “No” to the incense. The Zelda marathon will go on, but there won’t be anything other than Axe body spray hindering my pot-detecting senses.

    That brings us to the gun.

    There are certain conversations you expect to have when a daughter comes into your world. There’s the one about how it isn’t nice to chase the boys and kiss them when they don’t want to be kissed. There’s the one about strangers with puppies. A little later, there’s the one about bra-lettes. And a little later than that, there’s the one about, you know, THAT.

    I never expected to have a conversation about guns with my daughter. I know, shame on my feminist self.

    Seems all the girls have guns now. Nerf guns, that is. But my daughter won’t be content with the little manually powered pump action gun. See, my daughter aspires to be a ninja like the ones in those bad Asian action movies. She’s already well on her way. Combining her gymnastics training with a friend’s Nerf gun, she’s turned target practice into something out of The Matrix.

    She’s very good, she assures me, at performing a cartwheel, friend’s Nerf gun in hand. On landing, she executes a perfect bull’s eye into the target. The pump-action model is holding her back, though. “I have to stop and pump it up to shoot again,” she complained. The ideal gun, she assures me, will allow her to execute cartwheel after cartwheel, shooting all the while.

    Her dream gun is the NERF™ Dart Tag Swarmfire Blaster. It has “a full-auto 20-dart attack! . . . and a rotating barrel for rapid blasting and a removable stock for high-mobility attacks!” Obviously, the euphemistically named “Blaster” also comes with lots of exclamation marks.

    This cartwheel/weapon maneuver could well prepare her for a career in the military.

    Here’s the fly in my daughter’s machine gun ointment, though. It will be a cold day in hell when I buy her a gun of any kind. And it will be a colder day when I let her sign on for a tour of duty. It’s not just the getting killed in action—or inaction—that scares me. It’s the fact that she’s more likely to be raped by her comrades than killed by any foreign enemy. Just for the record, I took the same stance with my son. No guns; no military duty.

    Anticipating outrage from several quarters, I do not in any way believe that military service is not honorable. My dad and brother served and my niece is in the Navy. I realize, too, that my kids could die any day by just about any means. Still, I’m not out there pushing them in front of buses just to tempt the fates.

    So, there will be no guns and no incense. Peppermints might be nice, though.

    * Dying stupid includes: suicide with or without weapons, accidental overdose, accidental overdose involving either of the Olsen twins, aspirating vomit, driving cars into solid objects, stepping in front of buses, getting involved with drug addicts and being accidentally killed, allergic reaction to burning incense, choking on sandwiches, etc.

  • Spare the rod? Spare me!

    Yesterday, I wrote in my newspaper column about spanking and the fact that it, quite literally, can drive your kids crazy. Well, I stirred a little nest, I guess. I’ve been berated for humiliating my children and been informed the spanking can be appropriate. What do you think?

    http://naperville.patch.com/articles/the-bare-truth-about-spanking-it-affects-mental-health

  • Now, THIS is crazy!

    Image from Zazzle.com

    It’s Father’s Day. I’m sitting with my Dad on the patio.

    “How are you, Dad?” I ask.

    “Not very good,” he says, looking down at his hands. I’ve never seen him this sad.

    “Your mother rejected me,” he says and tells me, through tears, that my mother left him.

    I start to cry, not knowing which is worse, telling my father that my mother died nearly four years ago or letting him believe she’s still alive and left him.

    “Dad,” I say, as gently as I can, “Mom’s dead. She died almost four years ago. She would never leave you.” He looks up, confused. He’s confused nearly all the time now.

    “You took such good care of her, do you remember that?” He’s trying. “She had emphysema and you took such good care of her. She was just too sick. We had to let her go, Dad.” I wonder if he remembers making the decision ending life support. He believes me. He believes and he’s sad, but he’s calmer.

    I visit my dad every week these days, but I never know where it’ll be. Last week, it was Denver. He was waiting at his hotel, while my mother and grandmother shopped for houses. They’d come to Denver for a convention, something they did a lot. Traveling to conventions, that is, not traveling to Denver. He seemed anxious about buying yet another house, but he’d never really been able to say “No” to my mother. I told him I knew the feeling.

    Another visit saw us in Hong Kong, having dinner with a group of executives my dad clearly didn’t like because they’d kidnapped me. Yet another visit saw us in Rochester at a bicycle factory. There was our visit in an undisclosed location in Romania, where my dad told me he was forced to sit on a minaret to escape the men trying to capture him in Saudi Arabia. Recently, my sister married the Shah of Iraq, so we have an Arabian theme going lately.

    My dad’s delusions are nothing compared to the other residents. There’s the woman who gathers all of the baby dolls and stuffed animals and arrays them on a table. She dresses them all and sets them down to sleep then complains about how she has so many babies to care for. There’s the 105-year old woman who was once a singer. She still tries to sing but it comes out as screeching wails. There’s the woman who sits quietly and, when she catches your eye doesn’t say “Hello,” but “I’m afraid.” “Afraid of what?” I asked. “Of dying,” she replied.

    It’s hard not to make the leap to The Snake Pit or One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest or whatever look-inside-the-loony-bin movie was popular in your particular generation. This, after all, is what crazy people are and do.

    But I know better. My father and his housemates aren’t nuts. They have a terrible disease that literally eats at their brains, destroying the web that connects a lifetime of accumulated memory and leaving them with a stew of thought they continually try to make sense of.

    No. They are not crazy; I am. At least, that’s what my society says. I have bipolar disorder; I am bipolar. I never know which description to use, so I use both. But no matter how I reveal my condition, I get a universal reaction, spoken or no. “That chick is crazy.” Someone even told me, “Wow. You’d never know to look at you!”

    I suppose that’s a compliment; the self-harming, judgmental thoughts, over-spending and insomnia don’t show on my face. Of course, the medication helps. More likely, it’s an indication of how crazy Americans are about mental illness.

    I happen to come from a family of crazies. Alcoholism, schizophrenia, drug abuse were things I learned about early. None of the crazies looked crazy. Well, ok, the schizophrenic lived in another state, so I didn’t see him very often and can’t really say he never looked crazy. Still, “you’d never know to look” at any of them that they lived with demons.

    So, I don’t usually tell people I’m bipolar, though I’ve been doing it more often lately. Maybe it was the “you don’t look” it comment; maybe it’s my own growing acceptance. I’ve been more active in the blogosphere lately and the anonymity it affords makes it easier for crazies to hang out and connect with each other.

    In America, you can pretty much tell who’s a flag-waving conservative by, well, the flags waving on their houses. I decided, some time ago, to take back the flag. This is my country, too, I thought, and hung the flag on our porch.

    So, I’m taking back crazy. I’m a mom, a writer and a teacher. I have two great kids and the obligatory pets that go along with living in one of America’s most famous suburbs. I’m happily married.

    This is what crazy looks like, people.

  • C? Si! 100 posts and beyond

    I’m not ordinarily interested in anniversaries, commemorative dates and other forced significancies. I barely remember how long I’ve been married and don’t really think it matters much. Frankly, staying married is really just a matter of not getting divorced when things get bad. Things have always gotten better for us, so being married for 20 years is more luck than hard work.

    I don’t understand why we have to celebrate birthdays, either. I get older every year; so do you. Why do I have to go out to eat somewhere really fancy on April 22? Maybe I’d like to go out to eat somewhere really fancy on June 26 or October 13. I’m considering putting tokens in a jar for all of the events we’re supposed to commemorate. Then, if we feel like doing it up one day, we can just take out a token and celebrate whatever we happen to pull out. So, if I want to, I can celebrate my October wedding anniversary in March.

    Publishing 100 posts on Snide Reply, though, is apparently something to crow about. I’ve actually published 101, but I didn’t write one of them. I recently re-blogged a post from sweetmotherlover, a blogger I follow. Because I’m busier than a suburban mom driving her kids all over town to various summer activites, I decided to break my no-commemorations rule. I am celebrating writing 100 posts by re-blogging the first post I wrote, two years ago. Back then, I had about 35 followers. Last time I checked, I had about 144145147. Not the biggest following, but more than I ever thought I’d reach. I happen to think my first is also one of my funniest posts and hope you think so, too. Enjoy.

    Thanks friends, family and followers! I’ll keep writing if you’ll keep following.

  • How Old is Old Enough For Home Alone?

    How old were you when you first stayed home alone? My kids think it’s great. I think it’s a terrible idea, imaging every kind of disaster possible. So, of course, I wrote about it. Here’s the link:

    http://naperville.patch.com/articles/how-old-is-old-enough-to-stay-home-alone

    Do you remember staying home alone? How old were you? I had an old sister and younger brother so was seldom home alone. Maybe that’s why I love being alone now. Hm….yes! Let’s blame it on the siblings!

  • I’ll meet you on the dark side of the mom

    My children have their last day of school tomorrow. Technically, it’s really just their last hour of school before summer break. The school district is calling that hour a half-day; I can’t help but wonder why we wonder that our children have a hard time with math.

    My kids will be home all day for 83 days minus one hour. We’ll reconnect. We’ll sleep late, go to the beach, make cookies, go out for lunch, run through the sprinkler, watch movies, go to the library. By then, we will have made it to about day six. And then I will want them the hell out of my hair.

    I realize it’s not very mom-like to dread spending large amounts of time with your children. I realized this when I admitted that I could quite easily spend six weeks away from my kids without really missing them that much. I assumed that the six weeks would be spent doing things like, I don’t know, a writer’s retreat or teaching English in France or writing and reading on a beach in France. Whatever it was, it involved France. Further, I assumed there would be telephones and computers with Internet connections, probably even Wi-Fi, because—again, making an assumption—I figured that they have advanced technology in France. So, I could write and read on a beach in France and my kids could text me. We might even be able to Skype.

    But I was reviled. The other mothers pounced on my uncaring attitude toward my offspring. How on earth, they thought, could I be separated from my kiddies for so long?  Apparently, these moms assumed they would spend the six weeks in a sensory deprivation tank. And that their partners would cease to exist or would instantly become insensible, incompetent boobs completely incapable of caring for children.

    Admitting to being cool with a six-week vacation wasn’t the first time I realized there’s a dark side to this mom. That happened about two months after my son was born.

    I remember falling in love with my son. Not loving him, but falling in love with him. Smelling the top of his head and swooning. Taking pictures of his tiny toes and the soft fuzzy back of his neck, then kissing both. I was smitten. At the same time, I sometimes had an almost overwhelming desire to spike him like a football in the end zone. What kind of mother fantasizes about slamming her baby into the Astroturf, I thought? A bad one, came the answer. A really, really bad one who should have her child immediately removed from her custody.

    “This is completely normal,” said my therapist, admitting that while her fantasies were much less violent—she was just going to open her arms and let the baby fall to his fate—they existed nonetheless. Great, I thought, I’ve got a really, really bad mom for a therapist and her child should immediately be removed from her custody.

    My therapist also thought it was completely normal when I admitted later that I loved IKEA because I could shop in the calming comfort of cheap Swedish design while someone else watched my kid. I even admitted that, gliding down the escalator, I thought, “I could walk out the door, get in my car and drive away. I could be a long, long way away before anyone even noticed.”

    Eventually, I accepted the balderdash my therapist was feeding me: that good moms have deep dark fantasies involving their children. Just because other moms weren’t admitting it didn’t make it any less true.

    I didn’t spike my son nor did I leave him at IKEA. He’s sixteen now and still living with us. We even had another kid. Though I have never fantasized about spiking her, I still have my dark moments.

    My daughter cries about every little hurt, bump, or scratch she gets. She also cries when she makes a mistake or has an accident. Now, I’m not talking tears spilling gracefully from her cheeks. The biggest—and most racist—misconception about Chinese girls is that they are all delicate, quiet and well behaved. You know, that “uh, uh, uh, oh-oh, Little China Girl” thing.

    There are no dainty trails of tears from my daughter; there is wailing, sobbing, whining and lamentation. It drives me crazy. It makes me want to smack her. It makes me clap my hands over my ears. I know these are inappropriate responses, so I calmly tell her I can’t understand her when she cries. She cries more because now she is not just in pain, but also misunderstood. I tell her I need her to stop crying. Now she is crying harder because she’s making mommy mad. I tell her she has to the count of five to stop crying. Now she is crying even harder because she’s being timed. I get to five and tell her I’m going to start charging her a quarter for every minute she cries. All the while, my inside my head voice is screaming “Suck it up, you little baby!”

    My husband admits that he has had dark fantasies, particularly involving our son. Our son is not a demon though some have thought so. He has always been difficult and my husband came to parenting late. So, who could blame him when he screamed at his mother that at least he wasn’t “out whoring and drinking” when she mentioned how he might improve his fathering techniques.

    Our daughter appears to have cured my husband of his darkest fantasies. Now he’ll more likely fall into despondency over his failures as a father. He does sometimes fantasize about driving away and not telling anyone where he’s gone. He admitted, though, that he’d just go to a hotel for the night and watch old movies in peace.

    I realize I’m not painting a very loving picture of myself, but being honest about my darkest thoughts helps take away their power. There are days when going to the beach with my kids is exactly what I want to do. Then there are days when I’d rather clean the cat boxes. So, I’ll suck it up for the summer. The first day of school, though, I’m headed for France, at least in my fantasies.